The Head of FIDE Offers to Arrange Chess Tournaments Amongst Football Players

On June 30th, the President of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov held a business meeting with the Head of the Agency for Investment (PRONicaragua), Loreano Ortega, special representative for Russian Relations and son of the Nicaraguan leader. For information: Mr Ortega Jr. oversees the construction of a new canal between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and is the head of the Russia-Nicaraguan intergovernmental commission on trade, economic and scientific-technical co-operation. Considering the importance of the Russian chess school, Loreano Ortega expressed his willingness to increase the interaction, in playing chess, between Nicaragua and the Russian Federation on an intergovernmental level. In turn, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov told him about FIDE, its main aims and of the project, 'Chess in Schools' as well as the earlier achieved agreements with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

By the way, the talks were attended by the Assistant to the President for Education, Salvador Vergara and the director of the National Institute of Sports, Marlon Torres. On the same day, the head of FIDE met with the Nicaraguan Football Federation President, Jose Jasinto Reyes, who expressed his admiration for the cleverest game, and saw great potential for an interaction between the two kinds of sport. Ilyumzhinov and Reyes then discussed the possibility of organizing joint projects to attract additional interest in the development of chess. But the most important development during the FIDE President's stay in Managua was that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov proposed an initiative to establish regular chess tournaments between football players and that his idea was strongly approved by the Nicaraguan partners.